Reptiles Know It Python hearts key to treating cardiac disease!

After pythons eat a meal, their organs including their hearts nearly double in size within a day. Now, researchers have learned how the snakes are able to achieve this sort of growth without heart damage, a finding that could lead to new therapies for human heart disease.

After a meal, python blood is so full of triglycerides, a form of cholesterol, that it appears milky, said study researcher Leslie Leinwand, a biologist at the University of Colorado , Boulder. In humans, these fatty compounds would be deposited in heart muscle, but the snakes escape without damage.

The fatty-acid mixture is a long way from being used in human treatments, but the researchers are now testing it in mice with heart disease to see if they can halt or reverse the damage.

Lightning Hunters Like a bolt from above

Ten thousand feet high in the New Mexico mountains, Jake Trueblood is getting ready to fire rockets into a thunderstorm.

He lines up eight rockets, straight as soldiers, then connects each to a wire bobbin once used to guide missiles for the French military. Trueblood arms the rockets and heads underground, then waits for hours in a windowless chamber on whose metal roof the rockets sit.

Trueblood, a graduate student at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, is waiting for a good strong electric field in the atmosphere. Then he'll push a button that will send a whoosh of compressed air to a single rocket, sending it careening more than a thousand feet high. The goal is for the rapidly moving wire to trick the air into discharging its electricity in a lightning flash that will slam to the ground just above Trueblood's head.

He and other lightning hunters aren't out on the mountaintop this August day for the thrill. They're here, at New Mexico Tech's Langmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research, in search of knowledge. “We're here because we're trying to understand the simplest storms we know of and we can't,” says Graydon Aulich, a lightning researcher at the lab.

80,000 Muslims pray on Moscow street

Tens of thousands of Muslim men have knelt shoulder-to-shoulder in prayer on the freezing streets of Moscow to celebrate the religious holiday of Eid-ul-Azha.

Estimates of the number of Muslims living or working in the Russian capital run from 2 million to as high as 5 million, but the city has few mosques.

Police said 1,70,000 people celebrated the holiday in Moscow, including 80,000 who gathered on the street outside what was once the main mosque. The 100-year-old building was torn down in September and a new mosque being built next to it is still under construction.

Many of those who braved the freezing temperatures to pray on Sunday were migrant workers from countries in Central Asia that were once part of the Soviet Union.

HP to keep PC division

HP, one of the world's leading technology companies, recently announced that it had completed its evaluation of strategic alternatives for its Personal Systems Group (PSG) and decided to keep the unit in the company, says a press release.

Meg Whitman, HP president and CEO said HP earlier objectively evaluated the strategic, financial and operational impact of spinning off PSG. After the analysis they found that keeping PSG within HP is right for customers, shareholders and for employees.

After the review analysis the HP board of directors is also confident that PSG can drive profitable growth as part of the larger entity and accelerate solutions from other parts of HP's business.

PSG was the No 1 manufacturer of personal computers (PCs) in the world with revenues totaling $40.7 billion in 2010.

HP hopes PSG will continue to give customers and partners the advantages of product innovation and global scale across the industry's broadest portfolio of PCs, workstations and more.

Fresh bloodshed hits Syrian towns

More than 20 people have been killed in renewed attacks by Syrian security forces in the city of Homs, anti-government activists say.

The violence has continued despite the government agreeing to pull its forces off the streets and begin dialogue with the opposition.

The Arab League said the failure of its peace initiative would be catastrophic.

Separately, the authorities announced 553 detainees were being freed to mark the Eid al-Adha holiday.

Figures from the Local Co-ordination Committees on Saturday said 23 people had been killed in Homs and three in Idlib. Violence was also reported in a number of other towns and cities.

The latest deaths brought the number of civilians reportedly killed in Homs to more than 100 since Tuesday.

"Whole buildings have been gutted by tank fire," said Samer, a local activist, quoted by the Reuters news agency.

"Bread has run out and people who get hit in the streets are dying from their wounds on the spot because no one can reach them," he said.

According to the authorities, the security forces are fighting militant gangs who have been killing civilians in Homs.

Elsewhere, suspected defectors killed four pro-government militiamen near the border with Turkey, activists said.

'Catastrophic consequences'

The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Nabil al-Arabi, called for an immediate end to the bloodshed.

"The failure of the Arab solution will have catastrophic consequences for the situation in Syria and the region," he said shortly after meeting Burhan Ghalioun, the Paris-based leader of the dissident Syrian National Council.

A statement said he "called on the Syrian government to take immediate measures to implement the Arab plan, to which it committed itself".

The Arab League plan calls for an end to violence, the release of those detained, the withdrawal of the army from urban areas and free movement for observers and the media, as well as talks between the regime and opposition.

'Not stained by blood'

The Syrian government announced on Saturday that 553 people arrested during the protests would be released to mark the Eid al-Adha feast which begins on Sunday.

They would be people "whose hands are not stained by blood". The government said another 119 detainees had "recently" been freed.

On Friday, Syrian state TV announced an amnesty for anti-government fighters.

"The interior ministry invites those who carry arms, who sold them, distributed them, bought them or financed their purchase and who have not committed any murder to turn themselves in and surrender their weapons to the nearest police station," it said.

The United Nations estimates that at least 3,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March.

The government says Islamist militants and foreign-backed armed gangs have killed 1,100 members of the security forces.

Triple blasts kill 8 in Baghdad

Three bomb blasts rocked a busy market in Iraq's capital on Sunday, killing at least eight people and wounding 26 others, police and hospital sources said.

The blasts occurred in Shurja, an important commercial district in central Baghdad, on the first day of the Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Azha.

"I can see fire and black smoke mounting and a large number of fire engines, ambulances and police patrols rushing to the market," a Reuters witness close to Shurja market said.

A source at al-Kindi hospital in Baghdad said the facility had received eight dead and 26 wounded from the attack.

Iraqi forces are preparing to take full responsibility for security by year-end when all US troops pull out of the country, nearly nine years after the US-led invasion.

Military leaders have expressed concerns that militants might ramp up attacks as the 33,000 US troops left in Iraq pack up to leave.

Although violence has dropped since the peak of sectarian fighting in 2006-7, bombings and killings occur on a daily basis and a stubborn Sunni insurgency linked to al Qaeda and Shi'ite militias remain capable of carrying out lethal attacks.

The number of civilians killed in violence in Iraq climbed sharply in October following a string of suicide and roadside bombings in Baghdad. Attacks have also increased against Iraq's army and police.

Pak court indicts 7 over Bhutto killing

A Pakistani anti-terror court yesterday indicted two police officers and five alleged Taliban militants over the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, a prosecutor said.

Nobody has been convicted or jailed for Bhutto's assassination on December 27, 2007, in Rawalpindi, a garrison city near the capital Islamabad, in a gun and suicide attack after she addressed an election rally.

The death of the charismatic, Oxford-educated Bhutto, the first woman to become prime minister of a Muslim nation, threw the country into chaos, sparking violence and months of political turmoil.

Police say that three other suspects in the high-profile case have been killed -- including the chief of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud -- and two remain at large.

The police officers were Saud Aziz, who was the Rawalpindi police chief at the time of the killing, and Khurram Shahzad, another senior policeman.

The five suspected militants are Sher Zaman, Hasnain Gul, Rafaqat Hussain, Abdul Rasheed and Aitzaz Shah from the troubled northwest of the country, Azhar said.

FARC chief killed in Colombia

Alfonso Cano, the top leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, was killed by Colombian troops during an anti-guerrilla operation, officials announced.

"The military has thus achieved one of its most important goals," Alberto Gonzalez Mosquera, governor of Cauca department, told local radio.

Cano assumed the direction of the FARC in March 2008, after the death of Manuel Marulanda Velez. The FARC is Colombia's oldest and largest guerrilla force, believed to have some 8,000 members.

Row over Fuel Price Hike Mamata's rift with Centre: A political ploy?

Is Trinamool Congress' threat to pull out of India's Congress-led coalition government in protest against the latest round of petrol price hike for real or just a political grandstanding keeping her own constituency in Paschimbanga?

The debate may go on but one thing that clearly comes out of this is relations between the party led by Mamata Banerjee and the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are under strain.

The threat to withdraw from the coalition government is being seen by political observers as a manifestation of the strain that has been building up almost ever since Trinamool Congress and Congress came together to form the government in Paschimbanga after voting out the Left Front dispensation.

The first major sign of the strain came to the fore when Trinamool supreme Mamata Banerjee had opposed the Teesta water-sharing deal with Bangladesh, leading to its non-signing during Singh's visit to Dhaka in September and causing some embarrassment to the latter.

The relations between Trinamool Congress and the Manmohan Singh government developed more rough edges as Mamata had been unhappy over the latter's allegedly “inadequate” support to help her government financially.

Mamata had explained the state's poor fiscal health left behind by the Left Front government but funds have not flowed from the federal government when she needs it badly.

Mamata requires the money to execute the promises and projects she had made to the electorate before coming to power. Her eyes are firmly set on the panchayat polls in the state next year.

During the BJP-led NDA rule, Mamata had withdrawn the support to the then federal government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2001 on the issue of corruption before joining back two years later.

In a show of her assertiveness, Mamata did some blunt-speaking yesterday when she reminded Congress party that while her government in Paschimbanga has two-thirds majority of its own and does not depend on Congress support, Trinamool's backing is essential to prop up the Manmohan Singh government. In fact, Trinamool Congress is the second biggest constituent of the UPA government after Congress.

Trinamool Congress sources allege the party has not been consulted on repeatedly increasing the petrol price but has nonetheless been suffering from the collateral damage of such an unpopular decision.

Is Trinamool Congress serious in pushing through its decision to pull out of the federal government or just trying to put pressure on the latter to extract the financial concessions it wants for Paschimbanga? Only time can tell.

Countdown Begins Endangered big cats

BIG cats such as lions, tigers, leopards, and cheetahs could be facing extinction within the next two decades, leading conservation groups to call for increased efforts to save them, USA Today's Dan Vergano reported in a Friday articles.

“The populations of lions, leopards, cheetahs and especially tigers have been decimated in the past half-century,” Vergano said, adding that leading scientists report that tigers “have become so rare that lions have become their soup-bone substitutes, sought for Asian medicines and 'tiger bone' wine.”

“Do we want to live in a world without lions in the wild?” Luke Dollar, a biologist with Duke University and a member of the National Geographic-sponsored Big Cats Initiative (BCI), told USA Today. “That is the choice we are facing.”

According to estimated statistics from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), over the past 50 years lions living in the African wild have decreased from 450,000 to 25,000.

During that same period, leopards have decreased from 750,000 to 50,000, cheetahs from 45,000 to 12,000, and tigers from 50,000 to 3,000 (of which only 1,200 are breeding-age females).

“Lions play a role in keeping migrations going, and keep populations in check,” naturalist Dereck Joubert, the co-founder of the Big Cats Initiative (BCI), told Vergano. “Big predators play a role in keeping prey species vital and alert.”

“The habitat doesn't recover,” added his wife, BCI co-founder and photographer Beverly Joubert. “We're left with just hyenas or their equivalent.”

Vergano reports that the Jouberts have spent a quarter of a century making nature documentaries, including “Eternal Enemies: Lions and Hyenas” for PBS. Concerns over the fate of creatures such as the lion and the cheetah led them to contact National Geographic and convince them to re-double their conversation efforts for these and other big cats.

“Over the course of 18 months, the initiative awarded 19 grants to conservation efforts across Africa,” USA Today reported, and their efforts will continue this Monday, as they are encouraging Halloweeners to collect donations while going door-to-door, trick-or-treating. They are also accepting donations via text-message and online through the National Geographic website.

“We are seeing the effects of 7 billion people on the planet,” Dereck Joubert told USA Today. “At present rates, we will lose the big cats in 10 to 15 years.”